In conventional ultrasonic imaging, a focused beam of ultrasound energy is transmitted into body tissues to be examined and the returned echoes are detected and plotted to form an image. While ultrasound has been used extensively for diagnostic purposes, conventional ultrasound has been greatly limited by depth of scanning, speckle noise, poor lateral resolution, obscured tissues and other such problems.
In order to insonify body tissues, an ultrasound beam is typically formed and focused either by a phased array or a shaped transducer. Phased array ultrasound is a commonly used method of steering and focusing a narrow ultrasound beam for forming images in medical ultrasonography. A phased array probe has many small ultrasonic transducer elements, each of which can be pulsed individually. By varying the timing of ultrasound pulses (e.g., by pulsing elements one by one in sequence along a row), a pattern of constructive interference is set up that results in a beam directed at a chosen angle. This is known as beam steering. Such a steered ultrasound beam may then be swept through the tissue or object being examined. Data from multiple beams are then combined to make a visual image showing a slice through the object.
Traditionally, the same transducer or array used for transmitting an ultrasound beam is used to detect the returning echoes. This design configuration lies at the heart of one of the most significant limitations in the use of ultrasonic imaging for medical purposes: poor lateral resolution. Theoretically, the lateral resolution could be improved by increasing the width of the aperture of an ultrasonic probe, but practical problems involved with aperture size increase have kept apertures small. Unquestionably, ultrasonic imaging has been very useful even with this limitation, but it could be more effective with better resolution.